HOBOKEN -- Halloween is big in Hoboken. So big that the city holds a "Ragamuffin Parade" each year in which the city's children dress up and compete for prizes. (It kicks off at 3:45 on upper Washington Street this Thursday.) So big that close-knit neighborhoods on upper Bloomfield and Garden streets seem in a race to outdo each other with displays of ghosts, cobwebs, witches, and skeletons that get more elaborate each year.

And some displays are more innocent. A child posted this sign uptown, warning, "Be wer of spatrs. Thy crep and cral and sum tams thy Bite!!!"